


The Spare

by Zoya1416



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: AU, Being the Spare, Gen, Resenting being second, heritage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7234180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't easy being the spare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Spare

It isn't easy being the spare. Everyone was so happy and excited when his brother was born, especially with his mother being in so much danger during the delivery, and his father lost in time. Great memories. Great for _them_ , mixing joy and bone-crushing fear. His brother was unexpected, and while he was unexpected, too, it wasn't as much as a surprise because Ma and Dad already knew they could have children.

If there had been more time—if there had been more time between his brother's birth and his, maybe he would have been more—appreciated. Say, four or five years apart, when Young Sam was old enough for Ma's mind to be interested in procreating again. (They think he doesn't know words like procreating. Anyone whose mother has an enormous library on raising dragons would know that as soon as he got out of the chewing-on-books-Where-Is-My-Cow? phase.)

Actually, it was Ma who got him started reading the big library. Where's My Cow? was special to Young Sam, as was the 6pm hour, so Ma started reading to _him_ at 5 pm. She was a great mother, but perhaps didn't have the greatest wisdom about baby books. However, he'd enjoyed every minute of Whiffle's “On the Diseases of Dragons,” especially when she wandered into the territory of how mad she was when the irritating Whiffle refused to read her comments and corrections. This lead to _her_ first book, “On the Diseases of Swamp Dragons.” 

But Ma got pregnant again while she was still breastfeeding Young Sam, and that meant he and Young Sam were only about 14 months apart. 

Mom and Dad tried very hard to show him that he was special, so much so that—it meant that he always knew he hadn't been wanted, at least right then. But if he'd been born at another time, it wouldn't have been _him._ He's also read everything he can find on the History Monks who messed with Dad's life, although, truthfully, it was the Wizards—anyway, he's read about not crossing the same river twice, and also the aside by Archchancellor Ridcully, who, when confronted with this idea, said, “Why not? There's a damn bridge.” 

Young Sam gets to potter around with animal poo, so he can't. He had tried to think of something else creative and icky, and there just weren't that many kinds of Ankh-Morpork mud he was willing to touch. Corrosion and all that. Oh, and corrosion is also a word from a swamp-dragon raising mother who waves her hand over many ruined-clothes episodes with “They can't help it, Sam. Expelling corroding liquids keeps them from exploding.” 

There is only one person who's willing to help him be different. To be not the spare, but his own being. He's old enough now, eleven, actually, to realize that this person has ulterior motives, which were well known enough, inside his family anyway, to be on-the-surface motives.

Mostly motives involving annoying his Dad and laughing at him quietly. He _even_ knows, although how he's not quite sure, that this person still resents Dad marrying Ma. Even if the other person never got around to asking Ma, or if he did, she said, “No,” which no one is going to tell him. Yet. But he'll find out. And now _he_ has hidden motives. Which won't actually remain hidden, because this person is outstanding at figuring out what anyone else is thinking. Anyway, he's old enough now to be very proud of who he is, and be very happy to have the Patrician for a godsfather. Uncle. Something official anyway, because he, the spare, is the only person on the Disc who will carry forward this name.

Drumknott calls him into the office, where Lord Vetinari already has the Thud board set up. He's going to try to get his courage up. Although he knows Lord Vetinari doesn't like familiarity, he wouldn't be himself (son of the great Sybil Ramkin, she who is the man's only friend, he'd realized) if he didn't try.

“Good afternoon, Master Havelock. It's your turn to pick dwarfs or trolls.”

“Thank you, Uncle Havelock. I'll play the dwarfs.”

There was a span of time not quite short enough to be infinitesimal, but long enough for a compression of the dry lips on the other side of the table, as Havelock Ramkin Vimes wonders what the devil the man will do (son of the great Sam Vimes, who's spent many hours quietly, and sometimes loudly, defiantly, wondering the same thing). But Dad's spent a lifetime defying the Patrician, anyway, and this isn't even defying, it's—a gambit. Then there is an exhalation of sound not quite loud enough to be an amused sniff. When he looks up, the icy blue stare has been undercut by an expression not unlike a smirk. 

Whatever that means, he's not being tossed out of the office, so he bends to the board and starts placing his dwarfs.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, there was a 'playing the troll' joke to be made here, but it wouldn't have fit the tone.


End file.
